Pain and compassion in early modern English literature and culture / Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dijkhuizen, Jan Frans van, 1970-

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Studies in Renaissance literature ; v. 31.

Studies in Renaissance literature ; v. 31

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

Pain in literature.

Compassion in literature.

Physical Description:

272 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK : D.S. Brewer, 2012.

Summary:

In late medieval Catholicism, pain was seen as a way of imitating Christ, and as an avenue to salvation. During the early modern period, Protestant theologians came to reject these assumptions, and attempted to redefine and circumscribe the spiritual meaning of suffering. The rethinking of the meaning of pain during the early modern era is the central theme of this book. The author pays particular attention to how literary writers explored the issue of pain, by placing their work in a broad context of devotional, theological, philosophical and medical texts on suffering. In detailed readings of Alabaster, Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Lanyer, Spenser, Milton and Montaigne, he shows that early modern culture located the meaning of pain in its capacity to elicit compassion in others - yet the nature of this compassion was also fiercely contested. Book jacket.

Contents:

Early modern religious discourses of pain

Religious pain from Alabaster to Donne

The theology of physical suffering in Herbert

Poetry and the Passion of Christ in Crashaw and Lanyer

Pain, compassion, and community from Spenser to Milton

Pain and compassion in the Essais of Montaigne.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [251]-266) and index.

ISBN:

9781843843306

1843843307

OCLC:

783154210